Oh so close...

Well, I have officially finished stitching on the curtains, they have been washed and I am ironing tonight! I'm also going to fiddle around with the old blinds and new curtain rod (stick) to get them hanging finally! I should have them up in a day or maybe two depending on how fast I can get the rod up.
I have pictures of the last embroidery that was done on the first panel. These were fun little birds to stitch up.

In anticipation of the impending final picture post I think I'll fit in sections from the 2nd curtain also in this post.

I'm so glad this center shot came out this time. I tried to use all different stitches for the "Petals" of the center flower alternating in brown and black.

This next one is really one of my favorites that I did on either side it is bright and vibrant. I only have the one picture that was really clear and great. It was also pulled from the Hex stitchalong patterns and I just love how it turned out.

I like variegated floss so much that I have started to look for reasons to use it in patterns. I had several reasons with this one; I used the greens, reds and purple variegated floss. That was fun to play with more.
I had used the variegated floss once before on this pattern that I pulled from this wonderful web site:http://www.needlenthread.com/2007/05/free-embroidery-pattern-flower.html

I just love how it looks like pastel flowery eye candy...

Mmmmm. That is all for now, I have more to post and think I'll finish this project post up tomorrow if not the following day.

Corner of flowers.

This section of the curtain took me much longer that I thought it should. It may be that I had just made the work so detailed and so monotonous. I chose 2 colors for the chain stem and the same 2 colors for the fishbone stitched leaves. The alternating of colors I think is really what took so long. I had not worked 2 colors simultaneously before.

I like how the flowers turned out on these.

The pattern is adapted from a set that I found that were again not wonderful to print but were ok to sketch onto the fabric from. I have such a habit of saving images that I love or that I want to draw from, the bad part of that is that I often forget where I found them at. Click to see larger images.

I drew the image from a pattern adapted from this set:

And then there was Gnome.

After seeing so many images all over Craftster and Flickr I had decided to add a bit of whimsy to these curtains of mine. I stumbled across a copy of Aunt Martha's Merry Modern Mushrooms #3775. The patterns were not photographed great but enough so that I could draw from them as inspiration for my little gnome man in his garden.

The whole scene turned out cute and I decided that I would make him a little gnome bride too on the other side of the curtain. She is another story though as her side took on a life all of it's own. I keep going back to this trying to decide if it is finished or not. I think I may just go back and add 2 more fern fronds with leaves to add height and to balance his wife's side better.

Silly dog!

I suppose to be honest it was yesterday when I drove home to find our dog running free. She has been a escape artist since day one. I came home and there she was looking so happy to see me but running towards me from the side of our house?!? How surprised was I? Very. We have a dog tight chain link fence, my dear sweet husband that had been helping me combat the over running weeds in my garden had brought the garden bin back into the backyard at my request had not re-latched the gate and to be fair, neither had I. Well so I was surprised to see her all running at me so happy that I was home. I truly wonder what she spent her day doing out and loose. What was she up to?


Needless to say... Willow (our cat) was not at all happy about the whole situation, she is an indoor cat untill we get her fixed and was very vocal about Sky being outside all day loose and her all locked inside the house on her plushy spot.

*Sigh*

Star light, Star bright...

In my effort to re-post all of the finished embroidery from the curtains I've been working on I next come to another pattern that I pulled from the Craftster stitchalong (although I believe I was the only one to post anything for it) I just love how this pattern turned out, so vibrant and colorful.

I think I'll get a few more close up shots of these for eye-candy purposes.

You can also click on the pictures to make them large.

In the Beginning..

I suppose to be fair I should begin with how this project came to be. A few years ago I happened upon one of the most fun web sites that I had found in forever, Craftster. I began to check out the posts and found the needlework category; it had been years since I had really stitched. In fact since High school and then I was not very good at it. A few years ago we purchased a house and I have been trying to update and make it my own. Replacing curtains has been on the list of things to do and I thought since my grandmother had given me her old sewing machine that I would put it to good use, I zipped out some basic curtains and decided to decorate them with embroidery. I found the stitchalong area and decided to participate in the make your own hex stitchalong: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=217497.0
I picked out a few designs that I liked and decided to give them a try. This was the first one that I stitched up:

Even after I went back and filled with the French knots I still feel unsatisfied with it. I decided to make a different one and I was really thrilled with how it turned out.

I tried to use different stitches that I had not tried before. There are 6 different stitches in this one.

That’s how the beginning of these crazy curtains was. The plan I had only stored in my mind has since really come along way from these humble beginnings. I'll post more images of the curtains in the coming days. And when all is posted and finished I will post the final pictures of them happily hanging in my kitchen window. The tail end is taking forever since I keep getting side tracked with other things. I already have a new massive project brewing in my mind...After I make some new Christmas ornaments for 2009 to break up the project run.

Going to take New pictures

Ok, I'm just a little excited to go take pictures of this project. It is, however, raining and cloudy. I think I'm prepared to battle that though.

But look what I saw at the Zoo...

To me it looked like a perfect place for a few faries and a frog with a top hat would sit to have a tea party. Laugh if you must but I thought it was such a pretty little spot to happen upon at the Zoo.